La La Land

La La Land DVD review

Marc Wootton's ability to not only remain in character throughout, no matter how potentially dangerous the situation, but also to improvise and conjure humour on the spot, is nothing short of astonishing. It's unfortunate, therefore, that such genuinely jaw dropping talent has been wasted on a show with nothing of interest to say.

Marc Wootton: 'We cut the rope of a pair of climbers'

Comedian Marc Wootton, 33, made his name on The 11 O'Clock Show but his most famous creation is fake medium Shirley Ghostman, one of three Borat-like characters trying to crack Hollywood that he plays in series La La Land, which is out now on DVD.

Shooting La La Land

Director and Executive Producer of La La Land, Misha Manson-Smith, continues to explain how the show is put together...

How La La Land came to be

I first got the chance to work with Marc Wootton on My New Best Friend. I'd never really met an actor quite like him and don't think I have since.

Marc Wootton may be a skilled improviser, but he sometimes picks uneasy targets. The biggest laughs again come from documentary maker Brendan Allen, who wickedly tests the patience of Jeff Schwilk, a minuteman defending America's borders from illegals. But Shirley Ghostman's exploitation of her workforce is cruel - seeing pomposity pricked is one thing, urging a woman staffing a psychic hotline to threaten a caller with suicide is another. Then along comes mattress salesman Neil Leeds, who's obviously never met a camera he doesn't like. By the end of his encounter with wannabe actor Gary Garner, it's hard to know which one's the caricature.

Have you been watching ... La La Land?

Could Mark Wootton could be the new Sacha Baron Cohen? His BBC3 show certainly suggests so.

Making La La Land

Over the next few weeks, Misha Manson-Smith, Director and Executive Producer of La La Land, is going to tell us all about it - starting with why they decided to do it in the first place.

It doesn't matter that Sacha Baron Cohen has done all this before when Marc Wootton does it so well - that said, tonight's set-ups have fewer laughs and a lot more oh-my-God-no cringes. Grasping psychic Shirley Ghostman auditions for a TV show, competing against rival clairvoyants. Despite being a comedy character, he's as convincing as they are. Spooky. Meanwhile, bad actor Gary Garner shoots a sexy showreel, using his own autobiographical script. The funniest scenes come from unethical documentarist Brendan Allen, who's tackling ecology. Future generations will refer to this episode as "the one with the condor in a bag".

If you missed last week's episode I urge you to check it out on the BBC's iPlayer. In it we saw documentary-maker Brendan (one of the three deluded wannabes all played by Marc Wootton) pitch his idea for a climbing disaster documentary to a Hollywood producer. "Right, it'll look like an accident. Boom, this is what just happened to happen and, boom, then you're filming it... That could work. Absolutely..."

In practice, Wootton earns himself a lifelong pedestal in the pranksters' hall of fame, right next to Borat.

This week, Brendan's big idea is to release a condor into the wild. And he has persuaded a passer-by to pretend to be an ecology expert. Also tonight, aspiring actor Gary Garner films his show-reel and fake psychic Shirley Ghostman drugs the competition at an audition for a new show called Spirited.

If there are TVs in the afterlife, you can bet Jeremy Beadle will have La La Land on series link.

How Wootton escaped La La Land without getting killed

In his new BBC3 series, the comic unleashes deluded characters Shirley Ghostman, Gary Garner and Brendan Allen on the unsuspecting public of Hollywood. He lets us in on the anatomy of one of his pranks.